Wings of Wrath



The Inhilicon's Wings of Wrath is an artifact that appears in Heretic and Hexen. It looks like a golden skull with bat wings. Activating Wings of Wrath allows the player to fly. In Heretic, it is a time-limited powerup that lasts for 60 seconds. In Hexen, however, the Wings are reusable until the player exits the current hub; the player can press the Home key to drop to the ground and walk, and subsequently press the "fly up" key to reactivate the Wings and start flying again. While the Wings of Wrath are active, an icon appears in the top corner of the screen which spins while the player is flying and stops spinning when the player drops down and starts walking. In Heretic only, the icon will start blinking when the wings are about to expire.

Unlike other artifacts in both games, the Wings of Wrath may not ordinarily be transferred between levels (except different parts of a single hub, in Hexen). If a player leaves a level in Heretic or a hub in Hexen with a Wings of Wrath artifact, the artifact will usually be lost. For other artifacts, the player can only transport one of each kind between levels in Heretic, and up to the maximum of 25 in Hexen.

However, a glitch does exist, in Heretic only, which can be activated on any map which contains more than one Wings of Wrath artifact. If the player currently has the power of flight activated via using one of the wings when the level is exited, then the code responsible for trying to remove the wings from the player's inventory at level exit will fail to execute properly. Instead, the amount of Wings of Wrath being carried will be set to one, and the player will start the next level with them. This can be abused to perform minor sequence breaking. Only five official levels contain more than one instance of Wings of Wrath in single-player without also being the final level:, , , , and E6M1.

If the player presses the "fly up" key when the wings are not active, they will be automatically used if the artifact is in the player's inventory.

This item is included in the items percentage displayed at the end of each level in Heretic.

Strategies

 * In Hexen, a deadly fall can be escaped by activating Wings of Wrath. When the flight power kicks in, the player is suspended in midair and can fly to safety.

Appearance statistics
In the Heretic IWADs the wings of wrath are first encountered on these maps per skill level:

The Heretic IWADs contain the following numbers of wings of wrath items per skill level:

In the Hexen IWADs the wings of wrath are first encountered on these maps per skill level:

The Hexen IWADs contain the following numbers of wings of wrath items per skill level:

Other games
Hexen II has a similar item called "Ring of Flight", which is used immediately after being picked up.